


Resting Places

by BelowBedlam



Series: Poetry for Interstellar Blitz [3]
Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-25
Updated: 2016-07-25
Packaged: 2018-07-26 16:23:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,764
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7581379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BelowBedlam/pseuds/BelowBedlam
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Zisys's past shows up on the Citadel and dares her to jump.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Resting Places

**Author's Note:**

> This is a snapshot retelling of the Earth-Born gang mission. Finch has been re-named Goose, and plays a more personal role in Zisys Shepard's backstory. 
> 
> Mild violence, blood mention.

Zisys started running with her set, the Reds, officially when she was thirteen. Before then she was simply their baby girl. She was cared for by a number of people because she was a kid and she was an orphan, and she was sweet. Quiet.

They didn’t realize that she was mean until she was thirteen. They didn’t know she was angry until she beat another kid, a fourteen year old boy, into the ground for stealing from her.

Maya would say sometimes, when she was soothing Zisys’ black eye or some other bruise, that if they’d only known before the set did, maybe things could have been different. But at least Zisys -  _Makiya_  - would always have Maya. Wasn’t anything on god’s green earth that’d lose her Maya.

Well. Leaving earth altogether seems to have done the trick on that front and yet, Zisys can be light-years away and still run into her old fucking set.

“Goose, what the  _hell_  are you doing here?”

Goose stands outside of Chora’s Den, posted up like this is his regular spot when last Zisys knew the man hadn’t ever been off-planet. But her information is outdated by a few years. Seven, to be exact.

Zisys holds a halting hand up to Garrus and Tali because she knows they haven’t been on the Citadel long enough for either of them to think twice about obeying the silent order. She walks up to her old woe alone, her heels clicking like raps of glass on glass. She is wearing dark spandex and a low cut, black tank top: just enough to look like she’s club hopping. Her jacket billows so that her guns are concealed, but they’re little guns. Teeny, in comparison to what she’s been hauling the last few weeks. But these are just enough to do what she might have to do tonight. Besides, Garrus stays strapped.

But Zisys doesn’t need a gun against _Goose_. Not him. That’s crazy talk, even though he seems so different standing in front of her now. He still calls her Skittles and hugs her tight, but it’s different. Sure, that’s what years and space and history can do to two people, but the Goose that Zisys remembers would never be this far from home. Especially with Matisse gone? All their mama has is him.

Zisys wants to ask about how everyone is soing back home but even as Goose smiles in her face, she knows that she forfeited that right a long time ago.

“It’s good to see you, Makiya,” Goose says, and Zisys freezes for half a second because no one has called her that in years. “Real good. You done grew up on me. Got alien cronies and shit,” he gestures behind her to Garrus and Tali.

“I don’t have cronies you jackass, I have crew,” Zisys laughs. “Listen, I gotta handle some business, but if you’re still around in the next day or so, you should hit me up.”

“For sure,” Goose nods, “But ah, if you got the time tonight, you might could look in on something that a jarhead of your  _caliber_  might be able to finesse.”

It sounds shady but Zisys agrees to check it out. Old times, old skins easy enough to slip back into where Makiya would do anything for Matisse, and so would do anything for Goose. She can talk to a turian guard, see if whatever dumb shit this Curt had done to offend was small enough that they’d turn him over into her custody. She rarely flexes her muscles for anything outside of assigned business, but they can give her one time. Zisys doesn’t know Curt but if he’s running with her old set then he is weird, extended family. They all looked out for each other, looked out for her. She can look out for him.

She thought she could.

Holy shit.

“No, I got wrong intel. I’m sorry. Do what you need to do to him,” Zisys says, embarrassed as she walks away from the angry, unmoving turian guard. She walks right back out of the club, balling her fists as the embarrassment gives way to red hot anger that hazes out the corners of her vision as she looks for Goose.

He doesn’t have any explaining to do. Well, maybe a little, but primarily he just needs to stand there and take this heat.

“Goose!  _Darren_!” Zisys calls, shrugging off her jacket and stomping towards him like a madman. “What the fuck was that? You sent me in there to free a terrorist? You sent me in the  _space-alien bar_  to free a xenophobic terrorist? And what about you, what the fuck are you running?” She shoves him hard, watching his eyes widen when he actually stumbles.

“Real shit, Makiya,” Goose says harshly once he recovers, “Expansion type shit. That good shit, you know how we do.”

“ _Bull_ shit,” Zisys spits, reeling back from him. The disgust on his face warps him into someone she’s never seen, not even with blood on his hands. “That’s bullshit, Goose. You…you know better than this shit.”

“Nah,  _you_  don’t know how Maya’s mama died,” Goose retorts, “but it wouldn’t matter to you, you ain’t talked to her in years. You been skipping around with these alien motherfuckers, you been all up their asses like a damn dog. I didn’t think it was true, but I guess it is.  _Zisys Shepard_. Where the fuck did you get that name from? Not like it matters, you’re Makiya through and through and you’ll be Makiya in the dirt we got on you, too.”

And this is when Zisys realizes that it is no coincidence she sees Goose on the Citadel. Maybe even no coincidence that she sees him tonight, or that Curt has been arrested tonight.

Now she wonders just how many more of the Reds are out here with them, and what in god’s name they’re truly planning to do.

Heat blooms with the pressure building behind her eyes and she squeezes them shut; she sees Maya sitting in her salon chair on break, eating fries and laughing at another hairdresser’s joke. Maya’s mom Gladys flits in and out of the back of the salon, always smiling even as she sets folks straight.

It’s true, Zisys hasn’t spoken to Maya in years. Didn’t even know Gladys had passed.

“And you brought this ET motherfucker to cuff me, huh?”

Zisys opens her eyes when she hears the smooth click of a pistol, her hand tight on her own gun. Garrus stands next to her on one side and Tali on the other, but Goose is aiming his gun at someone else: the turian guard, who aims his own gun steadily. He glances at Zisys, and she can’t tell if he wants her to talk him down, or to stand down.

Slowly, she moves between the guard and Goose so his eyes drift to her. That’ll slow his reaction time down a bit.

“Chill out, man,” she says, holding a hand out to Goose. “Calm down. Put that shit away before somebody gets hurt.”

“What,  _you_  gonna shoot me?” He scoffs. “That’d be some shit. Man, I’m glad Matisse not here to see you.”

Zisys flinches. “Darren, I _will_ shoot you if that’s what it comes to. And I shoot to kill, man. Especially when someone is threatening the same.”

Goose laughs. “Uh huh, deserting bitch, ran off to fuck around with aliens. You fucking this bug-looking motherfucker?” Goose gestures to Garrus, who is still as stone. Something about the way he and Tali look at Goose has the man fidgety for a moment before he finds himself again. “Bet they wouldn’t like hearing how Commander Shepard used to run with an anti-alien set. Bet your bosses in particular wouldn’t.”

Blackmail. “Darren. Don’t _threaten_  me, Darren. Not even with lies, man.” Her reputation is an open book and despite the ruthless things she’s sanctioned, she’s clean. Never played dirty. Always just played hard.

But Goose is adamant. “They’d strip you of all your bullshit medals and send your ass back down to earth. Then what? We sure won’t take you back.”

This confrontation has re-directed club traffic; they stand in a bend of the walkway that wraps around a supporting pole just outside of Chora’s Den. Partygoers take the opposite bend, some watching from afar but most moving on. Two krogan bodyguards and another turian stand on the steps, undoubtedly watching and waiting on the other guard’s request. The only true light they have is the glow of the club’s awning, and the occasional passing of a rapid transit train. Like every day, the Citadel is cool at night. Just warm enough to be pleasant. Zisys doesn’t even shiver without her jacket, and one of the spaghetti straps of her top has slipped.

Good, steady night.

And then, everything happens at once; the turian guard curses, growling something at Goose. And Goose’s face screws up. And he raises his gun again.

 But he’s slow and he’s been talking and he has to think a moment before getting his gun hand to cooperate and it’s such a  _long_  stretch of time. Zisys feels like she could shoot him three, four times before he even got one shot off at the guard.

But she only shoots him twice; once in the chest, where she realizes belatedly that he’s wearing a vest beneath his shirt, and once in the head just before he turns his gun on her instead.

Goose falls with a thump; his gun clatters. Thank god it doesn’t go off.

Zisys releases a breath she didn’t know she held. Re-holsters her gun. Pushes her hair out of her face, and waits for the cheap rush of adrenaline to subside.

  _Breathe slow. Don’t hold on to that shit. Let it go, girl. Quick, before it takes hold._

Tali puts a hand on her shoulder and she shrugs it off. Garrus makes a clicking noise, and says something to the guard. It doesn’t even matter what he says.

Goose looks a lot like his brother in a weird, uncanny sense. Like they were twins, even though they were nine years apart. Even lain out on the ground, bleeding, Goose looks like his little brother. But Matisse hadn’t been shot in the head.

Zisys crouches to the ground and gets a better look at him, just so she can remember this clearly. The details.

“I told you I would, man,” she murmurs to the corpse. Pooling blood stops just before reaching her shoes, knowing its boundary. “I fucking told you I would. Didn’t I tell you?”

…

 

All Garrus knows is that Shepard knows the guy she kills in Chora’s Den, from earth. She’d known him well; she had loosened up, speaking in what sounded like her natural cadence, and she’d hugged him. He’d called her by the name he’d seen tattooed on her lower back. But as soon as she learned the truth of the situation, he could see Commander Shepard return like a zap of lightning: quick, and hot, and striking. The guy, Goose or Darren or both, never had a chance.

And Shepard has been quiet since he and Tali managed to get her on her feet and moving back to her apartment.

“You want to talk about it, Shepard?” Garrus asks as the three of them walk back to the embassy suites. “That was pretty rough in there. But you held up.”

“It’s my job to hold up, Vakarian,” Zisys says wearily, walking on. She’s in her down clothes, and they look good on her. She’s powerfully built and the outfit compliments her strength, somehow. He likes the shoes, how they click on the ground.

“Well, you’re off duty right now,” he says, risking a stilling hand on her arm. Tali looks between them, the glow of her eyes behind her helmet narrowed into slits.

Zisys narrows her eyes, too, pulling her arm from his grasp. “It’s a long story that doesn’t need telling. I knew him, he changed, I shot him. The end.”

“It hurts you.” He knows. He knows he’s pushing it. Hell,  _Tali_  knows he’s pushing it. But he does it anyway.

He pushes a bit too far.

 “You questioning my capability, Vakarian?” Zisys assumes position, standing tall with her hands behind her back. The stance is strange with her out of uniform, but it has a similar effect.

But it’s just…she’s gorgeous. He’d been telling the entire truth when he said that at Flux. She’d been gorgeous before pulling him into that corner and fucking him into goddamn euphoria. She’s gorgeous now, even though she’s hurting and her eyes are nearly as red as her hair and dry as the sidewalk.

Still, Garrus backs down swiftly. “No, Commander.”

“I didn’t think so. Now I thank y’all for coming with me tonight. And I’m sorry for it, because neither of you needed to be dragged into my personal business. Goodnight.” She nods to Garrus and squeezes Tali’s outstretched hand. “If you all need something to do tomorrow, I’ll be running that errand for Chellick come dinnertime. If not, we’ve got two days on this rock before we’re off again. Try and enjoy them.”

“You’re having your breakfast with me,” Tali quips in her singsong voice. Finally, Zisys smiles.

“Yeah, Tali. Till morning.” She glances at Garrus before disappearing into her room, closing her door firmly.

He and Tali look at each other.

“You have to be careful,” she says quietly to him. “Don’t you understand?”

“No,” Garrus says truthfully. “I really don’t.”

“Then shut up, or she’ll hate you.”

“But-”

“How is it that a quarian on her pilgrimage, first time off the flotilla, can read humans better than the ex-C-Sec officer?”

He laughs. “Because you’re smart, Tali. Sharper than sharp.”

“Well then get sharp, Garrus. Because she’s sharper. And she likes to cut.” Tali spreads her hands out to him as if to say “it is what it is,” before leaving him in the hallway, bouncing her way to her room.

Garrus stands there for a little while longer, trying to digest Tali’s advice.

It doesn’t work.

He’ll have to have his own breakfast time with the young quarian and pick her brain, because she makes a lot of sense without really making any sense, and Shepard is something he simply cannot shake.

 

The next day, he’s actually on his way to find Tali when he spots Zisys again. She’s in uniform, flawless and severe, her legs crossed at the knee as she takes a table in the embassy lounge nearest where one of the human ambassadors sits, nose in their paperwork. Garrus nods to Executor Pallin in passing, catching how he seems to sneer at the Commander before moving on.

She doesn’t seem to see anyone. She just sits with her arms and legs crossed, deep in thought.

Garrus doesn’t plan on bothering her. He hates when he loses his train of thought, or when it is stolen from him. He would not do the same to her.

But, she looks up at him.

Garrus likes human faces. They’re so expressive, little jumps and twitches contrasted with long smiles and pulled frowns and grimaces that turn their skin into dozens of fleshy wrinkles.

Shepard only blinks, slowly, and seems to wait for him.  _Well come on, you bullheaded shit._ She has said this to him before. He thinks that he is running low on these begrudging welcomes and that he should, as Tali suggested, shut up soon. But now, she has already called him over and it’d be worse to throw the offering away now that it has been given.

“Afternoon, Commander,” he says politely, sitting down because she hates looking up at people. “Breakfast was good?” He remembers her complaining about running out of cereal once. He’d never actually seen what she was talking about, and he’s pretty sure the Citadel does not have it.

“Tali is the sweetest soul in the galaxy,” Zisys says with her usual, matter-of-fact honesty. “So yes, thanks. Now, what do you want?”

And this, her usual bluntness.

“Nothing, Commander. Just didn’t expect to see you sitting out here alone.”

She shrugs. “Vakarian, are you gonna ask about last night or are we gonna sit here and talk around it?” Leaning forward on the table just makes her look tiny, her chin cupped in her hands as she watches him with sharp, brown eyes.

Garrus shifts. “Well. You didn’t want to talk about it.”

“Consider this a window of opportunity.” She blinks pointedly at him. “Here: Goose was my ex-boyfriend’s older brother. His name was Darren, but we called him Goose. I can’t remember why, his shit was always complex. As in, they called me “baby girl” because I was the youngest, then they called me Skittles when I started dying my hair. Simple. Goose was always esoteric with his shit. Anyway,” she waves the memory away as though it were a gust of smoke, “we go way back. Went, I guess. He didn’t blame me when I left Matisse to die. Probably because Matisse didn’t die.”

“I thought…” Garrus remembers the tattoo on the back of her shoulder. R.I.P means dead.

“Matisse died a couple years after I went into the military. That bullet caught him in the neck, no more luck. I was twenty. Cried like a baby for a week straight whenever I was in my bunk. I loved that boy, but we were kids and we were being stupid.” Zisys runs fingers around the edges of her hair and looks over his shoulder.

“Goose kept in touch for a while after that, maybe for two or three years, then we lost touch. Or rather, I stopped responding to him. Couldn’t keep doing it, for reasons that are  _truly_  none of your business.”

“Understood.” Garrus looks at where her little gun tattoo shows just above her bunched sleeve. He wonders if she has a similar on the  _Normandy_. “He didn’t seem to like your name.”

“Because I changed it when I decided to come out here,” Zisys looks at him, shrugging. “I wanted something different. Didn’t want to be Makiya out among the stars, or whatever.”

She doesn’t offer anything more on that front, and Garrus isn’t sure he really needs to know. He knows her as Zisys Shepard. Whether that’s the name she was born with or not is irrelevant. In his head, she’s Zisys. And he likes her name, what it makes his mouth do.

She goes on, her gaze going sharp. “Our set- our gang- wasn’t into that genocidal racist shit ten years ago. We were just a common territorial operation with some contraband shit going on. We killed people over territory and other shit that didn’t really belong to us. I was a kid. I didn’t have my parents and I found a family there. Et cetera. But I don’t abide by the shit they’re running now. At all.”

 _Aha._  Garrus understands; she wants him to know that she isn’t anti-alien. He’ll admit he was ready to shot Goose himself once they understood what truly was going one, but he didn’t once suspect Zisys of anything so damned hateful. It literally never crossed his mind. And, not because she’s fucked aliens (and fucked him); Garrus is well aware that fucking someone isn’t the same as respecting their existence. Still. Never crossed his mind.

He flares a bit, but doesn’t know why it makes him that mad. “You thought I’d think any less of  _you_?”

“You’re turian. That shit had to piss you off  _leagues_  more than it pissed me off.”

“But you thought-”

“I’m not a fucking mind reader, Vakarian. And I don’t suppose that I know you so deep. So I’m just letting you know, whatever you  _might_  think,” she snaps, pressing the heels of her hands to her eyes and sighing. “Goddammit. Sorry. Sorry, Vakarian. You don’t deserve that. This is personal. Bunch of personal bullshit that wasn’t supposed to follow me out here. I don't even know if they're gonna ship him back or not. I can't even care.”

Her face crumples so briefly that Garrus nearly misses it. She presses her palms to the tabletop and visibly wills herself to pull it together. He can see her thoughts, hear them as if she’s saying them aloud.  _Shape up, you’re in public. You’re good. You’re good._

A burst of polite laughter fills the air like a cloud of gnats, the subsequent chatter rippling through the air and making it stale, somehow.

They’ve got to get out of here. He’s gonna get her out of here.

“Let’s walk.” Garrus stands up, holding his hand out to her. Zisys looks at his hand the same way she’d looked at the rachni the first time, but he is determined. Movement is good, movement can precede the discipline she’s grasping for. “Come on.”

“Where are we going?” She sits back in her chair, but doesn’t stand up.

Garrus looks around and shrugs. “I don’t know…we’ll walk a circle, end up back here. Just to get you moving. Helps clear the mind.” He likes moving around anyway, and in another day they’d be back on the Normandy. Shepard will appreciate stretching her legs without having to also lay down cover fire or do some tricky biotic shit once they made it out to Feros, he knows it.

And she seems to, too, the way she considers him. Carefully, so his skin prickles.

“Alright, fine.” Zisys stands on her own, ignoring his hand as he’d anticipated. But he’ll always offer it, because she compels him to. Even if she doesn’t know it. “Let’s walk.”

…

 

There is a moment when they stop to watch the Citadel trains zoom around like birds, both of them leaning against the chrome railing, where Zisys closes her eyes against a cool breeze and the needle-sharp urge to cry comes over her again. She just bows her head and waits for the feeling to pass.

Garrus’s hand is hesitant at her back until he realizes she won’t push him away; he rubs a soothing circle between her shoulder blades.

She hasn’t thought hard about earth in a long time. Or at least, it feels that way. Now, she doesn’t even want to see the planet on her map. Doesn’t even want to pass it on the  _Normandy_.

Zisys lets a few tears fall to ease the pressure, but only a few, before she wipes her eyes and moves them along.


End file.
